A system including one computer and a plurality of display devices (a CRT monitor, a liquid crystal display and the like) connected thereto has been known. Display devices with reduced power consumption come to be more and more widely used, for example, for a plurality of display devices connected to a personal computer, or for a large-scale multi-display system having a combination of a plurality of liquid crystal displays. When a plurality of monitors or displays are used at one time, however, power consumption is still considerably large, and there is still a problem from the viewpoint of power saving. As a solution to this problem, by way of example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2000-163035 (hereinafter referred to as ('035 Reference) discloses a technique of changing an operational mode of a display that satisfies prescribed conditions, in a computer connectable to a plurality of displays. Specifically, a display or displays other than a display on which an active window or a mouse pointer is displayed are set to off state, suspended state, or sleep state. According to '035 Reference, individual power management of a plurality of displays enables reduction of wasteful power consumption.
Recently, as one type of image processing apparatuses as electronic equipment, an image forming apparatus (typically a copy machine) for forming an image on a sheet of recording paper has been widely used. An MFP (Multi Function Peripheral) is known as one type of such image processing apparatuses. An MFP has a plurality of functions including copying, printing, facsimile function (hereinafter, facsimile is also denoted as “FAX”) and scanner function.
In an MFP, a liquid crystal panel is often used as a display device. In the MFP, an operation panel having a light-transmitting touch-panel placed overlapped on a liquid crystal panel is used to facilitate operation and setting. The state of MFP is timely displayed on the liquid crystal display panel, and by a touch operation by the user (touching the touch-panel with his/her finger), the operation of MFP can be set.
An MFP having a function of reducing wasteful power consumption, by stopping power feed to a fixing unit if it is left unused for a prescribed time period after the end of a job such as copying, to save power, has been known. When the MFP is set to a power save state, the operation panel (liquid crystal display panel) is also turned off.